The lazy month of August in Sicily is far too hot for any murders to be committed, as Inspector Montalbano assures his girlfriend Livia in this tenth book in Andrea Camilleri's delightful Italian series. But when her friend's young son goes missing, it seems Livia and the inspector's vacation will be spoiled after all. A secret apartment and a grisly find in an old trunk are just the beginning, as Montalbano looks for the boy while coping with the sweltering heat, the suspicious death of an Arab laborer, and the lure of a beautiful girl. With his sardonic take on small-town Sicilian life, his gustatory predilections, his delicate balancing act between the official and unofficial worlds he inhabits, and his genius for deciphering the most enigmatic of crimes, Inspector Salvo Montalbano has won millions of fans worldwide. First appearing in Italian in 1994, and in Stephen Sartarelli's superb annotated translations since 2002—as well as in an Italian-language television series starring Luca Zingaretti—Andrea Camilleri's sly and witty series "breathes out the sense of place and the sense of humor that fills the air of Sicily" (Donna Leon).